Romney Backer Firing 27,000 Workers, Bain Capital Style

Mitt Romney infamously said “I like being able to fire people,” and apparently so does one of his multimillionaire backers. Hewlett Packard CEO Meg Whitman announced on Wednesday her plan to fire 27,000 employees at the tech giant. Whitman, who has been HP’s CEO since September of 2011, claimed that the company was “making real progress” on a conference call with investors, but was lagging behind other technology hardware firms.

Whitman’s decision to fire people increased the value of the 1.9 million stock options she owns to $43,700,000 in after-market trading.

Increasing the wealth of top shareholders while shredding the jobs of employees was part of the business of Bain Capital, the private equity firm Romney made his fortune from.

Whitman, the former CEO of eBay, is a major Romney backer. She endorsed the candidate and has donated at least $100,000 to a Super PAC supporting Romney’s candidacy. Whitman also bankrolled the Romney campaign in his unsuccesful 2008 presidential campaign.

In 2010 Whitman failed in her attempt to run for governor of California as a Republican, afte spending $144 million of her fortune.

During her tenure at eBay, Whitman engineered the purchase of Skype, for $4.1 billion in cash and stock. Four years later eBay sold the company at a loss for $2.75 billion.

Some trace the ongoing problems at Hewlett Packard to another Romney supporter. Carly Fiorina, who failed in her attempt to run for the U.S. Senate from California, was the driving factor behind the ill-fated merger of HP and Compaq. In March, Fiorina endorsed Romney for president.